Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

One of the ways tenants survive this injustice is to plug space heaters into their already overloaded electrical sockets and leave them on 24-7. Fire-safetywise, you’d do just as well tossing an unsupervised ten-year-old into a room with oily rags, lighter fluid, and matches.

As a result, we write about the perils of space heaters at least once every winter. The only surprise was that December and January had been so mild we made it all the way to February without running our annual offering.

“Did a space heater have anything to do with it?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?”

“But-” I started.

“I don’t care,” Szanto snapped. “Brodie asked for a space heater story, so write him a damn space heater story. You know how he gets.”

I did. Some editors cajoled writers into doing stories with threats or loud demands. Brodie went more for the Chinese water torture approach, drip-dropping in on you until you just gave in. Sometimes, when he approached you from behind, he jingled the change in his pocket just so you knew he was there. Most longtime Eagle-Examiner reporters, trained by years of Brodie jingling, stiffened reflexively when they heard nickels and quarters banging together.

“Can’t we just reprint one of the old space heater stories?” I asked. “I seem to recall from the archives the nineteen eighty-eight space heater story was a classic-fruity yet full-bodied, with hints of singed circuit breaker.”

Szanto hit me with pained look No. 28-upturned lip, creased forehead-and I gave in.

“Fine,” I huffed. “A space heater story.”

I went to lift myself out of the chair.

“I want you to work with Sweet Thang,” he said.

I sat back down. Sweet Thang was what Szanto-and most of the other cave-dwelling editors in the building-called our newest intern, a honey-haired twenty-two-year-old Vanderbilt graduate whose real name was Lauren Somethingorother.

Between her button nose, bright blue eyes, and a torso that rather nicely filled out a sweater set, she hadn’t lacked for mentoring from some of the men in the office.

The only problem was, there was a rumor out she had gotten the job because her father and Brodie golfed together at their country club. So while working with her would improve the scenery, it did come with certain dangers.

“Do I have to?” I asked.

“Just make her feel like she’s doing something important, then when it comes time to write, make sure she’s in a different county from your keyboard,” Szanto said.

“Fine. Whatever.”

It was only a stupid space heater story. I could knock it off in a few hours and then move back to real journalism. As I left Szanto’s office, I told myself it would be simple enough.

That, it turns out, was my fourth mistake.

* * *

With something short of my usual zeal, I moseyed across the newsroom and found Sweet Thang sitting in the area occupied by an ever-changing cast of interns. Newspaper economics have been so bad so long that our place, like most places, has a hiring freeze that is now old enough to enroll in the third grade. There have been buyouts, some more voluntary than others, and the threat of layoff is constant. The only people left behind are the foolish (people like me, who love the business too much to leave) and the desperate (people who can’t find anything else and cling to the newspaper like bilge rats to driftwood).

Whenever a full-time staff member leaves, taking their high-five-figure or low-six-figure salary with them, they are replaced by an intern who is paid wages that would shame an Indonesian sweatshop. Really, they ought to do these kids a favor and tuck food stamps in with their paychecks each week. Still, the kids keep on coming to us, in ever-increasing numbers, to soak in all the valuable news-gathering “experience”-read: overwork-we provide them.

Given their low lot in life, I always go out of my way to be friendly to the interns. If nothing else, they’re good for entertainment.

“Hi, Lauren,” I said, as I walked up to her.

She looked startled.

“Oh, my goodness, you know my name?”

“Yeah, I’m-”

“You’re Carter Ross!” she said, flashing a smile that surely weakened the knees of many a Vanderbilt frat boy. “You’re, like, the reason I wanted to come to work here. When I read your Ludlow Street story, I told my dad, ‘Dad, I totally have to work at the Eagle-Examiner .’ Oh, my goodness. I even tweeted about your story so all my friends would know about it. And they all retweeted it. And we looked for you on Twitter, but you’re not there, so we just tweeted round and round until we were tweeted out.”

“Lauren?” I said, mostly to stop the river of words spouting from her mouth. Instead, I only diverted it.

“You can call me ‘Sweet Thang’ if you want to. I know that’s what everyone calls me behind my back. I’m okay with it. I mean, it’s not, like, flattering or anything-I don’t think of myself as a Sweet Thang. I actually took courses in women’s studies and stuff. All I’m saying is, it’s not like I’m going to Human Resources or anything, because it’s like my dad told me, ‘A newsroom is still a man’s world. You have to have a tough skin.’ But then he also told me if anything got really bad, we could just tell Uncle Hal-sorry, Mr. Brodie-and he would take care of it. But I don’t think being called Sweet Thang is like an insult or anything, it’s more like-”

“Lauren,” I said again.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, looking downward. “I only babble when I get nervous. I’m so sorry. I’ll stop. Oh no, now I’m babbling again. Okay. That’s it. Stop.”

She put her hand over her mouth and looked up at me.

“Szanto wants us to work together on a story.”

“You and me? Together?”

I nodded.

“Oh, my goodness, that’s so perfect,” she gushed. “Oh, my goodness, teach me everything. I want to learn. I want to write just like you. You’re totally my favorite writer at the paper, you don’t even understand. The only writer I ever liked as much as you was Judy Blume, but that was when I was nine after I read Freckle Juice, and it was a totally different thing. Oh, my goodness, I have to shut up. So what story are we working on?”

The words were coming so fast it took me a second or two to realize she had, somewhere in there, formed a question I was expected to answer.

“It’s a follow-up to the fire story today,” I said.

“Oh, my goodness, that story was like the saddest thing ever. Can you believe those two poor little boys dying like that? I just about cried when I saw their pictures. Did you see their eyes? They were just beautiful little boys. I mean, I would have almost cried even if they were ugly. I don’t want you to think I’m superficial or anything. I’m just saying-”

I held up my hand like a crossing guard halting traffic.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Anyhow, it’s supposed to be a story about the dangers of space heaters.”

She tilted her head.

“Space heaters?”

“That’s right.”

“What do space heaters have to do with the little boys?”

“At the moment, nothing,” I said.

“No one from the fire department mentioned anything about space heaters.”

“I know.”

“So how are we going to…?”

“I don’t know,” I snapped. “Stop asking so many questions.”

The bright blue gaze dropped down to the desk. The heart-melting smile vanished. Even the bouncy, honeyed hair seemed to droop. I felt like I had kicked a puppy.

“I didn’t mean … look, it’s just…” I said, groping for the right words. “See, sometimes, Brodie-uhh, Uncle Hal-he gets these ideas in his head that a story exists whether or not it actually does. But because he calls the shots around here, we sort of have to humor him.”